


Waiting

by zarabithia



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Growing Old Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-10
Updated: 2007-02-10
Packaged: 2019-05-19 23:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14883632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: All parents grow old.  Even the superhero kind. Lian deals, with help from her favorite Uncle.





	Waiting

When the call from Uncle Dick comes, Lian is three thousand miles away. With the first crack of his voice over the phone, guilt nibbles at the back of her throat and wraps tightly around her chest, like the bandages Cerdian still hasn't learned how to apply to land dwellers, but she pushes it away. She doesn't have _time_ to deal with it, not yet. Time spent feeling guilty is travel time wasted.

She leaves her team - her legacy - in the capable hands of Cerdian, and takes the jet to New York.

Stepping inside of Wayne Memorial Hospital, the all too familiar scent of antiseptic combines with the quiet that she has only known within the white walls of a hospital and the shackled confines of Tanner's plane. But then, she's never liked hospitals, as they've never been anything more to her than than tangible embodiments of failure.

Her aversions, both real and imaginary, make it difficult to concentrate, difficult to breathe, and difficult to see where she's walking. But she makes it to the right floor and the right pair of arms pull her into the right kind of hug that finally lets the guilt come to the surface.

"I'm sorry, Uncle Dick," she mutters into the strong arms that quieted half of all her childhood fears.

"There's nothing to be sorry for," he scolds, patting her hair like he used to when she was a little girl. She doesn't protest, because she wants nothing more than to be that little girl again, the one could crawl into either of her fathers' arms and let them take care of everything wrong in the world.

"I should have been here, and I wasn't," she protests. "He had to go into surgery without me here." If their situation had been reversed, _he_ would have made it to _her_ bedside in time.

Uncle Dick guides her to a chair and they sit down next to one another. "Your duty required you to be elsewhere, Lian," he says, and Lian wonders where all the lines around his eyes came from. They didn't used to be there, and she wonders if it makes her a bad daughter that she didn't notice them anymore than she noticed the signs that clearly had to be there with her other father. After all, people don't just wake up one morning and need heart surgery. It has to build. If she'd been a better daughter, one that had been around more frequently, she would have noticed the signs; she's sure of it.

"Dad's more important," she argues, snuggling into his arms, taking as much comfort from his hug as she knows he receives from the touch.

"Your father is very proud of you, and so am I," he answers into her hair. "And we'll be even prouder of you when the JLA finally gets around to asking you to join."

"The organization that was never good enough for you?" she teases, hugging him tighter and trying not to think about how fragile he feels.

"Hey, I _led_ the League once."

"For about five minutes. Thereby proving my point."

There's a deep chuckle, followed by a series of coughs from the man that never should have stopped being invincible. Lian ignores the side effects of the attack on a long ago dead city coming up from Uncle Dick's lungs as she asks, "Speaking of the League, did you contact -"

"Kyle is stopping by Star City to pick up Connor before swinging by Gotham to pick up Dinah. They'll . . be here as soon as possible."

At the mention of her aunt, Lian shivers. "God, she's already lost so much. . ." _Grandpa Ollie_. Sin. Barbara. _Aunt Mia_. "If she has to lose Dad too. . ."

Verbalizing her fear isn't a good idea. The sob that she'd done such a good job holding back is released before she can stop it, before she can remind herself that Uncle Dick needs her to be strong, because he isn't. Not anymore.

But he's still stronger than she is, because his grip on her only tightens. "Your father is a very stubborn man," he reminds her, and Lian barely has time to think about pots and kettles before he continues. "When we were coming to get you, all those years ago, he deliberately disobeyed a direction in battle, choosing to go after the bad guys instead of staying where I told him to. It was far from the first time, of course, and it certainly wasn't the last. But I remember it the most because I said something very stupid to him that day. I told him, 'you're an archer, not a fighter.' "

"He told me that, once. When you and Aunt Dinah finally got him to agree to allow me to train. Of course, he added that the 'fight' saved your life."

There's a snort that tells Lian everything she needs to know about that certain embellishment. "I was wrong back then, Lian. Every day since then, your father's shown me he _is_ a fighter. He'll pull through this and be fine."

She could almost believe it, and would have, if it hadn't been for the little crack in Uncle Dick's voice on the end of "fine."

"You've never been a very good liar,Uncle Dick," she says softly.

"I can beat a Lie Detector," he argues, artfully avoiding her question the way Robin used to avoid mobsters' bullets. He'd been good back then. _They_ both had, and Lian hates that they ever had to stop being good.

"I know you better than any old machine," she answers.

"Never could fool a Harper."

"Nope. We know you blood-deep."

There's another chuckle, and another round of coughs. Then there's a sigh - the heavy, hopeless kind - before he says, "Do you want me to tell you the truth, Lian?"

"Yes." Lies don't do any good, least of all in battle.

"Fine. The truth is the doctors aren't hopeful. The truth is I have no reason to believe that your father is going to be okay. But the biggest truth of all is that your father never stopped being stubborn. He'll make it through surgery just fine because he's too stubborn to quit." _He has to_ goes unsaid.

The time for talking is over as Lian takes comfort in the protective arms of her favorite uncle while hands gnarled with age brush her hair away from her forehead. Together they wait on the man who means the world to them both with the hope that he'll come back to them.


End file.
